Goodall Worsted Company, Sanford, 1930s

Description

"This aerial view was taken sometime in the mid-1930s, in any event before 1939 when the Lafayette School, which does not appear in this photograph, was built. The Goodall Worsted complex fronts River, High and Spruce Streets. The chimney, 302 feel tall and put up in just 29 days in December 1920, was the tallest in New England. It was part of a new boiler plant, ingeniously fitted out, according to Clifford Holdsworth, so that the boilers could convert from oil to coal, or the reverse, in just 24 hours to take advantage of fluctuating fuel prices. Goodall Worsted's most notable product was Palm Beach cloth. The process for weaving it was invented in the early 1900s by William Nutter of Sanford. His brother F. Everett Nutter refined the process a few years later to take the scratch out of the cloth. From the late 1920s the firm also tailored and marketed all Palm Beach suits, though suit manufacture was carried on elsewhere, principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. When Goodall Worsted and Sanford Mills merged in 1944, 4,500 persons were employed in the firm's Sanford and Springvale plants." - "Cluster of Maine Villages" - Harland Eastman.